I have been traveling the world as a journalist and passionate lover of all things fun for 20 years. I have had weekly columns in USA Today and Investors Business Daily, published thousands of articles in leading magazines from Playboy to Popular Science, and am the author of Getting Into Guinness. I am the Contributing Travel Editor for Cigar Aficionado Magazine, the restaurant columnist for USAToday.com, and am a co-founder of TheAPosition.com, the leading golf travel website. I love every kind of travel, active, cultural and leisurely, and my special areas of expertise are luxury hotels and resorts, golf, skiing, food, wine and spirits. I tweet @TravelFoodGuy

While people who don’t drink or follow bourbon may have hardly noticed, this course of action had gone viral and taken on a life of its own, especially since Maker’s Mark has a lot of very loyal fans and an almost cult-like following. Many, including at least one longtime ambassador, as well as bartenders around the nation, have very vocally criticized the company, especially through social media. The change had all the makings of a major marketing debacle and was widely reported, everywhere from my site here at Forbes.com to Time Magazine, the Chicago Tribune and Huffington Post to name just a few. Blog posts, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages have been full of irate and often obscene responses. Maker’s Mark is owned by Beam, Inc., the nation’s second largest spirits company. Beam, Inc. also owns several other bourbons at various price points including its namesake Jim Beam and Knob Creek.

Well, Maker’s Mark COO Rob Samuels and his father, Chairman Emeritus and founder Bill Samuels, Jr. just both called me together on a Sunday morning to break the news that they have switched gears rather dramatically.

“Over this past week we have been extremely humbled by the overwhelming response. Our customers have spoken loud and clear and we have heard them. Effective immediately, we are returning to 90 proof, which it has always been since we started. We are starting that tomorrow morning at the distillery,” said Rob Samuels.”

“When we got the first comments, we thought our ambassadors had missed the point, since we had worked so hard to make sure there was no change in taste whatsoever,” said Maker’s Mark founder Bill Samuels. “But we found out very quickly that they don’t want any change at all, don’t want anyone messing up their whiskey. It’s amazing. They’d rather have to go from store to store to seek it out and deal with any shortages than to have us make any changes.”

As soon as I got the news, I called my friend Jim Martel, who has been a Maker’s Mark ambassador since 2002 and in my last column, explained that he would never buy Maker’s Mark again and was basically disgusted with the move. Like many others who wrote in with comments, he also questioned the entire shortage issue, and just yesterday Tweeted a picture of a shelf overflowing with Makers Mark at his local Safeway in Seattle. When I told him about the change he was genuinely impressed. “There was a lot of talk about how it’s this big corporate entity now that it is owned by Beam and how they wouldn’t just adjust the price to the market conditions of supply and demand because they didn’t want to get it close to their higher tier bourbons, Knob Creek and Basil Hayden. Like many customers, I had this feeling that the company had abandoned its loyal consumers and didn’t care about the public. But this shows that consumers actually have a voice, and they seem really contrite.” Will he drop his new boycott? “Yes, I’m going to continue drinking Maker’s Mark, because just as I stopped to show my opposition I’m going back to show my support for them doing the right thing.”

Rob Samuels concurred: “We’re very proud that consumers made it so clear what they wanted, and we are changing back immediately. They let us know in no uncertain terms that they’d rather deal with any possible shortages than with any change in the bourbon. It’s not just the taste, it’s a special relationship we have with our customers – consumers truly own the brand and we have heard from them loud and clear. At the same time we are expanding the distillery and capacity long term to manage the increased demand, a demand which has surged in the past 18-24 months.” The entire bourbon category has been growing by leaps and bounds, one of the hottest segments in the spirits world. I’ve also written here at Forbes.com about Maker’s Mark newer and higher end offering, Maker’s 46 which is unchanged and in many ways is even more delicious than the original.

It remains to be see how the original change and subsequent reversal will affect sales, but I’d guess this could end up being a roundabout marketing coup for Maker’s Mark, since it brought lots of media attention and publicity and under all the angst emphasized that the entire reason for the upset customers in the first place was because the product is so good, so high quality and so beloved. Now that things are back to the way they always were, it paints the company in a feel good, consumer friendly way that shows how responsive they are to their customer base.

Or as Bill Samuels succinctly put it, “We got the picture quickly and we are not quite as stupid as we were at this time last week.”

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As I sit finishing my Sunday lunch paired with with a Troegs Brothers’ Troegenatork instead of some national brand pablum such as Budweiser or Miller, I am reminded of why I prefer Woodford Reserve to other mass market bourbons such as Makers Mark. This is not the beginning of a brand ruined by a promise of a larger market share that has been sold to them by MBAs and consultants, the same people responsible for the Chevy Cavalier and New Coke.

Their move is akin to the Kool-Aid flavored vodkas in effort to appeal to minors transitioning to majority but too stupid to learn anything about the various distillates. It’s easier to sell them a low octane bourbon than to educate them about what is good and why it is. Sort of the opposite of the fortified wine market which sold the alcohol level added to grape juice. I guess the novice tippler is more delicate these days.

Makers Mark appears to be another niche business overcome with know-nothing MBAs and consultants telling a century old company how to do better to justify their bill. We could use a whole lot less of that.

Thanks for writing. I have to disagree – the notion that the change was aimed at young drinkers seems like a conspiracy theory and I don’t buy it. You also seem to ignore the fact that they immediately switched gears based on consumer response.

The timing makes me wonder if the Samuels are battling with their corporate leash holders. The speed at which the 42% stuff hit shelves after the original press release makes me believe they wanted to start a public backlash to show Beam inc you can’t risk messing with the Maker’s brand. Did the Samuels family just power move their corporate owners?

V.O.B., I’m pretty sure they started bottling because it was suppsoed to reach stores in less than 2 weeks. Also, the Samuels told me they were switching back to bottling 90 proof at the distillery starting today, which suggests they were already doing something else.